Search This Blog

Waiting until After

I wanted to tell this story when it was over. Not mid-sentence or mid-stride. I wanted to be able to craft it and pull the insight and wisdom and truth out of the lessons I had learned and offer them up as succulent pieces of light for people like me struggling with similar issues. That is not going to happen. There is no more waiting in my life. This story, I now believe, is not meant to be told in the after but in the middle. After allows for reflection, insight, distance and time. It allows for sunlight and rose-colored glasses and a clinical aspect to the journey. The middle assures intensity, messiness, acute feelings and humanity. The after lets me clean, dissect and anesthetize the reality for myself and the reader. The middle assures access to the truth I see in that moment.

Here is today. I am in my mid-thirties, overweight and single. I live in a little apartment on a quiet street and four of my siblings and my parents are my neighbors. I work at a job where I am adequate and unfulfilled. I want to be married. I want to be in graduate school. I want to be thin. None of those dreams have come true. The dissonance between my dreams and my reality too often wrings joy and hope out of my soul.

I'd like my future to look a whole lot different than my present.

Yet, instead of waiting for that future to materialize, I am going to chronicle this journey in the midst of the messiness, the indecision, the competing goals and the process. I've wanted for so long to tell this story when it is over but I do not think that is the best way any longer. I think the best way to begin the story in the middle and tell the first part of the story in bits and pieces and keep you updated on the twists and turns as I face them.

It scares me a bit to do it this way. But it also energizes and unleashes my joy. This is my story.

Get link

Facebook

Twitter

Pinterest

Google+

Email

Other Apps

Comments

Eden-How beautifully honest and raw. Reflections like this make my heart happy because there are no pretenses, there is no pride, just humble truths and honest self-evaluations. What a treat to peek into your soul. I'm looking forward to reading and learning right along with you. You are an amazing woman!

eden,love this. love that you're letting us join you in the ups and downs, twists and turns. love that this "messy" version will do more to help others find their own paths and truths than you'll ever know. love that we get to learn and benefit from your knowledge, passions and challenges. love that you're pushing forward to make your dreams reality. love that it inspires me to do the same with my own life.

THANK YOU!You possess the type of courage that is sorely lacking today. There are really no happy endings in this life--nothing ends here. Everything we experience here is merely a middle of something and we won't know the end until our journey here is over. As Elder Maxwell said, this is the "mortal, muddled middle." I adore that you are refusing to pretend that mortality isn't full of painful, broken experiences. You'll help the rest of us learn about reparation instead of creation of false realities. I will look forward to and savor EVERY word! Love you!